Mongolian horde seekers have arrived here in large numbers today.  Great forces are obviously at work somewhere in the world.

But I fear your journey has been in vain.  A lemming crusade.  Here we wait patiently for Thor.  Here we fear no Khans.

They say that Thor will soon appear on the horizon and that the sun reflecting off of his helmet will be blinding.  They also say that the Khan brothers, having put down their weapons, will arrive only minutes ahead of Thor, and that they will have tiny, digital camcorders in their large, grimy, bloodstained hands so that they can capture the whole moment on film.

But then they say a lot of things.

I have no idea what it is or where it came from, but it looks like giving up coffee makes me the stuff lead stories are made of.  Or so The World Star Gazette would have us believe.

In other news:  my blog entries are popping up all over the place on surrounding community Co-op bulletin boards.  Farmers throughout the county seem to embrace my philosophical moodiness.  Many of my entries have been translated in Spanish, and the migrant population, beginning to swell with the spring’s warmer weather, have embraced me as their new Cesar Chavez.

And all because I gave up drinking coffee fourteen days ago.  Who could imagine such a thing.

Today I must be busy.  Think of me as a phone call, placed to someone irritating, say like the IRS.  If you call them, you have to wait.  Pure and simple.  I’m kind of like that today.

Thank you for visiting Word Shadows.  Your comments are always greatly appreciated, and will be replied to in the order they were received.

A big project is nearly complete and demands one final burst of my energy.  You have to love the customer who one second asks you why things take so long, and the next asks you to walk around the garden with her and marvel at the rhododendron blooms.

Word Shadows appreciates its readers.  Please continue to hold and someone will be with you shortly.  Your hold time is approximately [in computer generated voice] six hours and fourteen minutes.

After today, things will be different.  By simple definition, today can’t be tomorrow, and that alone makes things different.  Doesn’t it?

Thank you for holding.  In order to expedite your comments, your cooperation is appreciated.  Using the alphanumeric keypad on your touchtone phone, please enter the opening chapter from Leo Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace.  If you make a mistake, simply press *9, and begin again.  Your hold time is approximately [the voice] six hours and thirteen minutes.

I’ve been shopping again.  Hardly news for some, but front page headlines for me.  You might remember my struggle to pick out a few new clothes.  But with my ten day trip fast approaching, I have decided that it is time to purchase a digital camera.  Things such as aging family faces must be captured so they can be stared at in amazement in private.  And maybe I will decide to document the entire trip right here on Word Shadows.  It’ll be like a miniature episode of One The Road with Charles Kuralt, only without the knowing voice or big RV lumbering along until it bumps into something interesting.  But who knows, maybe I’ll bump into something like the World’s Largest Twine Ball. 

Not only do I have the navigational prowess to get there, but it lies almost directly in the path my friend Randy and I will be taking.  And the fact is, I’ve seen the big ball of twine many times, because I remember driving by it as a kid as my family headed north to visit family.  But we never stopped, which to this day seems more curious then the big ball itself.  Wasn’t my dad even the least bit curious?  I would think that a ball of twine that large would begin to exert some sort of gravitational field that would pull in even the most hurried father.  I know it pulled hard on me.  I would smash up against the side window as we drove by and then find myself hurled into the back window as we zipped by.  This was long before seatbelt laws.  A time when kids often flew all over the car.

I have no idea what the big hurry was.  All we did was drive non-stop up to the lake so we could stare at bobbers floating above a school of bluegills who never seemed hungry.  Seems to me we had plenty of time for a big ball of twine.

But now I’ll be behind the wheel.  Well, probably Randy, it’s his car.  But I’m sure there will be plenty of time to stop and look at all kinds of things along the road.  All worthy of comment.  All odd if caught in the right light.  The world is filled with oddities.  You just have to know how to look.

And the timing to shop for a new digital camera couldn’t be better.  Only yesterday I found myself being invited to participate in Jo Spanglemonkey’s latest creation, Ten:Ten - a blog dedicated to capturing a photograph from your life at precisely 10:10 a.m. each day.  Having not a bit of free time to even consider playing along, I immediately said yes.  It didn’t matter that I owned no digital camera.  It didn’t matter that I would have to keep track of time.  Minor details.  It reminded me of the time I talked my way into the pantry chef position even though I knew absolutely nothing about preparing salads and desserts for hundreds of hungry guests.  I think I spent the first hour of that job looking for the bill on my chef hat.

But I liked the idea of Ten:Ten, so I joined the club.  Besides, free lifetime membership and my wheels rotated free every 3000 miles.  Or was that a complimentary water bottle and a mint on my pillow every night.  Or maybe it was guaranteed access, the wheels deal, and a mint.  Oh, I don’t remember.  I never pay very good attention.

Besides, it’s 10:10!  I have important work to do.

Update: Thanks to Gina Smith and Reuters, who bring to light that a new nude roller coaster ride record has been set (did we even know there was a record?), I have realized that my upcoming trip might very well find itself written into the record books.

Is there a world record for nude men staring at the world’s largest ball of twine?  Could Randy and I set the standard?  Who will snap the photograph?  Will the mayor hand over the key to the city?  Does Darwin, Minnesota even have a key?

So many questions come to mind when one thinks about getting nude in public.

Setting the nude roller coaster record took less then two minutes.  I’m sure Randy and I could stand there for much longer then that.  Maybe we could arrange for a few fake Keystone cops to chase us around the giant twine ball and the whole thing would make for great slapstick entertainment.  Or maybe a political statement.  Something about two nude midwestern boys finding an ancient weapon of mass destruction right here in the heartland of America.  A short film filled with eye-opening discussion and humorous chase scenes.  Are the boys heroes or villians?  Which side of the agenda do they scamper around on?

I can’t wait for my trip to begin.